the seductive picture of cities growing

The course of exhaustion is evanescent but plottedwith such precision that any artist could paint it. The lastraindrops swell around the bud-point of every bough. Thereis nothing certain about the appearance of bodies in physicalspace. A slow cascade, nearly stilled. It isn’t a matter of if youwish to appear, but of whether you will, and for long. Whatscheduled pleasure doesn’t admit to some rain, in theforecast at least. Such are the pleasures of thought to theperfectly thoughtless. A flag snaps endlessly flat in the breeze.There’s time to get out in the world and to breathe, to liventhe lungs, to raise the eyes, to visit the rambling park whereteenagers brawl. As for me, I’m merely eroding by choice.Each decision guides me through the next, like choosing apath through the city by following continuous holiday lights.Sometimes they’re strung with disastrous economy. WhereasI’d gladly follow a bird if I could only get one to lead me asRobert Frost was led in his famous poem, “The Woodpile.”Possibly birds don’t behave in that way any longer. Theyseldom encounter ghosts, or so I believe. Perception will besalvation, one tells oneself, imagining one has beenperceived. I take your disappearance as notice from the otherworld. Someone lifts an iron and rain begins. The sun growsrepetitious like desire. The feeling is that of a marketplace.An ethereal mildew coats every mote in its confines. It’s saidthat the lowliest garbage is flush and sublime. And becomingfamily, and arresting the breaking wave. A pattern we holdbeyond hope of modulation.

William Coffin. The Rain, 1889. Oil on canvas. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Andy Stallings lives in Western Massachusetts with Melissa Dickey and their children. His first two books, To the Heart of the World (2014) and Paradise (2018), each came out with Rescue Press. He teaches and coaches at Deerfield Academy.